Fall of the Spirits of Darkness

Schmidt Number: S-3419

On-line since: 15th January, 2008

LECTURE 13

The Fallen Spirits' Influence in theWorld

Dornach, 27 October 1917

We are going to continue on the same
theme, as this will provide a background for the evaluation
of the significant events which now present themselves to the
human mind, events in which humanity is now caught up and
which are more significant than is often realized today. I
have sought to show that momentous occurrences in the
spiritual world form the background to these events. I have
also spoken of the profoundly significant battle which took
place in the spiritual regions of the world between the early
1840s and the autumn of 1879. This was one of the battles
which occur repeatedly in world and human evolution and are
customarily represented by the image of Michael or St George
fighting the dragon. Michael won one such victory over the
dragon on behalf of the spiritual worlds in 1879. At that
time the spirits of darkness who worked against the Michaelic
impulses were cast down from the spiritual realm into the
human realms. As I said, from that time onwards they have
been active in the feeling, will and mind impulses of human
beings. Present-day events can therefore only be understood
if one turns the inner eye to the spiritual powers which are
now moving among us.

Inevitably the
question must arise as to the actual nature of the battle
which raged in the spiritual regions between the 1840s and
the 1870s, and of the activity of the spirits of darkness
since November 1879.

The story of
what was behind this significant battle, or we might say
behind the scenes of world history, can only unfold slowly
and gradually. Today we shall first of all consider some ways
in which a reflection of the battle was cast on human
regions. I have often drawn attention to the great
turning-point in the evolution of modern cultural spheres
which came in the early 1840s. This was the turning-point
which brought the full impulse for the development of
materialism. Materialism could only develop in consequence of
major occurrences in the spiritual world which then continued
in a downward direction and gradually caused materialistic
impulses to be instilled into humanity. If we consider how
events in spiritual regions were reflected here on earth, two
things are particularly evident.

The first is
that the purely physical intellect and a culture based on
this showed a tremendous upsurge in the 1840s, 50s, 60s and
70s, much more so than people imagine today — future
observers will see this more clearly. It is reasonable to say
that anyone who studies the evolution of humanity and has an
eye for more subtle elements in human life will note that
there has never been such an upsurge in subtlety of
conception, acumen and critical faculties for the adherents
of materialism as during those decades. All the thinking I
have characterized, thinking that leads to technical
inventions, to criticism and to brilliant definitions, is
physical thinking and is bound to the brain. A materialist
who wanted to describe human evolution would have reason to
say: ‘Humanity has never been as clever as during those
decades.’ It really was clever. If you study the
literature — here I mean not only fine literature
— you will find that at no other time were ideas so
well defined and critical thinking so well developed as in
those years, and this was in all kinds of areas. We see a
mirror-reflection develop in human souls of the aims certain
spirits of darkness were seeking to achieve in the 40s, 50s,
60s and 70s of the last century, always hoping for
victory.

They sought to
get possession of an ancient inheritance of humanity. This
was something we referred to yesterday: Through millennia,
the progressive spirits of light guided humanity by means of
blood bonds. They brought people together in families,
tribes, nations and races, uniting those who belonged
together on the basis of truly ancient human and world karma.
With their feeling for those blood bonds people then also had
a feeling for missions which went a very long way back in the
world, missions designed to make the blood bonds —
which, of course, came from the earth — part of the
general human karma. If one turns one's attention to the
spiritual world during the 1820s and 1830s, when the souls
which were later to enter into human bodies were still in
that world, one finds that the souls which were about to
descend had certain impulses which, among other things, were
due to the fact that for millennia they had been bound to
particular families, tribes, nations and races each time they
were on earth. From the 1840s onwards these souls were meant
to make the decision to enter into particular bodies. For the
spirits of light who sent their impulses into human souls
were, of course, guiding human evolution according to the old
blood bonds. And so the human souls in the spiritual worlds
had certain impulses to follow the ancient human karma on
entering into bodies which were to be the population in the
second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth
centuries. The spirits of light were using the old measures
of controlling and guiding those souls.

The spirits of
darkness wanted to gain control over this. They wanted to
drive the impulses of the spirits of light from those human
souls and bring in their own impulses. If the spirits of
darkness had won the battle in 1879, the relationship between
human bodies and souls would have been utterly different from
what it actually has become in people born after 1879.
Different souls would have been in different bodies, and the
plan according to which human affairs on earth were ordered
would have been according to the ideal of the spirits of
darkness. But it is not. Thanks to the victory that Michael
won over the dragon in the autumn of 1879, this could not
happen.

During the
1840s, 50s, 60s and 70s, the battle was reflected on earth in
the particular acumen, critical faculty and so on, which I
have described. As I have said before, mere speculation does
not get us anywhere; it needs genuine spiritual observation.
Speculation could never show that the very qualities of the
physical intellect which I have mentioned are a reflection
here on earth of the battle over reproduction, over the way
in which generation follows generation. These things have to
be observed. Anyone who thinks that the right connections
between the physical and the spiritual worlds can be found by
using the physical intellect is very much in error. This
approach will normally give the wrong result, because the
rules of logic used are those of the physical sciences. These
apply only to the physical world, however; they do not apply
to the relationship between the physical and the spiritual
worlds. This, then, was one way in which the battle for the
blood was reflected.

The other way
— this again is something I have mentioned before
— was the emergence of spiritualism in the 1840s and
later. Certain groups, and they were far from small, sought
to explore the connections with the spiritual world by using
mediums, that is essentially by physical means. If this had
succeeded, if the spirits of darkness had been strong enough
to gain the victory over Michael's adherents in 1879,
spiritualism would have spread enormously. For spiritualism
gets its impulses not only from the earth, but is also
governed by influences coming from the other world. It is
important to be very clear that this is not a matter of
choice; it is not possible to be easygoing and say:
‘Either we accept such things or we refuse to accept
them.’ It certainly is not like this. The things that
happened in spiritualistic circles partly represented a
significant intrusion of the spiritual world; they certainly
arose from impulses which came from the spiritual world and
were often closely bound up with human destinies. They were
nevertheless a mirror-reflection of the battle which had been
lost in the spiritual region. This is also why spiritualism
lost momentum and became so strangely corrupted after that
point in time. It would have been the means by which people's
attention would have been drawn to the spiritual world, and
it would have been the only means if the spirits of darkness
had gained the victory in 1879. If they had won, we would
live in a world of indescribable acumen which would apply to
all kinds of different spheres in life. Speculations on the
Stock Exchange, which are sometimes quite dimwitted nowadays,
would have been made with incredible acumen. This is one
aspect. On the other hand, people far and wide would have
sought to satisfy their spiritual needs by using mediums. So
there you have what the spirits of darkness intended:
physical acumen on the one hand, and a way of seeking
connection with the spiritual world based on reduced
consciousness on the other. Above all else, the spirits of
darkness wanted to prevent spiritual experiences, living
experience of the spirit, from coming down into human souls;
this was bound to come about gradually after their fall in
1879.

The kind of
spiritual experience which is utilized in the spiritual
science of anthroposophy would have been impossible if the
spirits of darkness had been victorious, for they would then
have kept this life and activity in the spiritual regions. It
is only because of their fall that instead of merely
critical, physical intelligence and the mediumistic approach,
it has been and will increasingly be possible to gain direct
experiences in the spiritual world. It is not for nothing
that I recently told you how the present age is dependent on
spiritual influences to a far greater extent than people
believe. Our age may be materialistic and want to become even
more materialistic, but the spiritual worlds reveal
themselves to human beings in many more places than one would
think. Spiritual influences can be felt everywhere, though at
the present time they are not always good ones.

People often
find it embarrassing to admit to others their knowledge of
spiritual influences, but many things they do, or initiate,
are done because something appeared to them in a dream which
was a genuine spiritual influence. Ask poets why they have
become poets. Speaking of the time when they first began to
be poets they will tell you that they had spiritual
experiences which came as in a dream, and this gave them the
impulse to be creative. Ask people who have started journals
why they did so — I am giving you facts — and
they will speak of what they call dreams, though this was
actually the transmission of impulses from the spiritual to
the physical world. And there is much more of this, also in
other areas, but people will not admit to it, for they think
if they tell someone: ‘I've done something or other
because some spirit or other appeared to me in a
dream,’ the other person will call them idiots. This,
of course, is not a nice thing to hear. It is the reason why
we know so little about what really goes on among people
today. The things which now happen sporadically in one place
or another are merely the vanguard of what will happen more
and more: spirituality will come to human beings because
Michael won his victory in 1879. The fact that we have a
science of the spirit is also entirely due to this. Otherwise
the truths concerned would have remained in the spiritual
worlds; they could not have come to dwell in human brains and
would not exist for the physical world.

You have been
given images which may serve to demonstrate the intentions of
the spirits of darkness in the 1840s, 50s, 60s and 70s when
they fought the followers of Michael. These spirits have been
down here among human beings from the autumn of 1879. They
have failed to achieve their aims: spiritualism will not
become the general human persuasion; people will not grow so
clever from the materialistic point of view that they fall
over themselves with their cleverness. The spiritual truths
will take root among human beings.

On the other
hand, the spirits of darkness are now among us. We have to be
on guard so that we may realize what is happening when we
encounter them and gain a real idea of where they are to be
found. The most dangerous thing you can do in the immediate
future will be to give yourself up unconsciously to the
influences which are definitely present. For it makes no
difference to their reality whether they are recognized or
unrecognized.

It will be the
main concern of these spirits of darkness to bring confusion
into the rightful elements which are now spreading on earth,
and need to spread in such a way that the spirits of light
can continue to be active in them. They will seek to push
these in the wrong direction. I have already spoken of one
such wrong direction, which is about as paradoxical as is
possible.
[ Note 1 ]
I have pointed out that
while human bodies will develop in such a way that certain
spiritualities can find room in them, the materialistic bent,
which will spread more and more under the guidance of the
spirits of darkness, will work against this and combat it by
physical means. I have told you that the spirits of darkness
are going to inspire their human hosts, in whom they will be
dwelling, to find a vaccine that will drive all inclination
towards spirituality out of people's souls when they are
still very young, and this will happen in a roundabout way
through the living body. Today, bodies are vaccinated against
one thing and another; in future, children will be vaccinated
with a substance which it will certainly be possible to
produce, and this will make them immune, so that they do not
develop foolish inclinations connected with spiritual life
— ‘foolish’ here, of course, in the eyes of
materialists.

A beginning
has already been made, though only in the literary field
where it is less harmful. As I have mentioned,
[ Note 2 ]
learned medical experts have published
books on the abnormalities of certain men of genius. As you
know, attempts have been made to understand the genius of
Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Viktor Scheffel, Nietzsche,
Schopenhauer and Goethe, by showing them to suffer from
certain abnormalities. And the most astounding thing in this
field is that people have also sought to understand Jesus
Christ and the Gospels from this point of view. Two
publications are now in existence in which the origins of
Christianity are said to be due to the fact that at the
beginning of our era there lived an individual who was
mentally and psychologically abnormal; this individual went
about in Palestine as Jesus Christ and infected people with
Christianity.

These, as I
said, are the beginnings in the field of literature. The
whole trend goes in a direction where a way will finally be
found to vaccinate bodies so that these bodies will not allow
the inclination towards spiritual ideas to develop and all
their lives people will believe only in the physical world
they perceive with the senses. Out of impulses which the
medical profession gained from presumption — oh, I beg
your pardon, from the consumption they themselves suffered
— people are now vaccinated against consumption, and in
the same way they will be vaccinated against any inclination
towards spirituality. This is merely to give you a
particularly striking example of many things which will come
in the near and more distant future in this field — the
aim being to bring confusion into the impulses which want to
stream down to earth after the victory of the spirits of
light.

The first step
must be to throw people's views into confusion, turning their
concepts and ideas inside out. This is a serious thing and
must be watched with care, for it is part of some highly
important elements which will be the background to events now
in preparation.

I am choosing
my words with great care. I am saying ‘in
preparation’ because I am fully aware that to say
‘in preparation’, after the events which have
taken place in the last three years, is something
significant. Anyone who is able to see more deeply into these
matters knows them to be preparations. Only superficial
people can believe that this war, which is not a war of the
old kind, will tomorrow or the day after be followed by a
peace of the old kind. You have to be very superficial to
believe this. Many will believe it, of course, if outer
events appear to be in accord with the notions some people
have; they will fail to realize what actually lies dormant
beneath the surface.

It is
interesting to consider the decades from the 1840s onwards,
both in general and in detail. We have had a general
characterization of them in these last weeks, and I have to
some extent gone over this again today. A study of
representative figures — the spiritual impulses which
power evolution come to expression in such figures —
will show that the general insights gained also prove true in
individual instances. Let me give you an example which may
seem to be a minor one. It is something I also mentioned last year.
[ Note 3 ]

Numerous
commentaries have been written on Goethe's Faust. Oswald Marbach's
[ Note 4 ]
commentaries do not lack
depth; they are in some respect profound. It is fair to say
that the people who have been least profound are the literary
historians, for it is their academic duty to understand such
matters, which, of course, tends to be an obstacle to real
understanding. Oswald Marbach wrote well about Faust because
he was not really a literary historian. He lectured on
Goethe's Faust, mathematics, mechanics and technology at
Leipzig University, and at the present time the mysteries of
the cosmos are easier to penetrate by studying Marbach's
mechanics and technology than by applying the ‘modern
science’ of historians and literary historians.
However, we do find something quite peculiar in the case of
Oswald Marbach. He spoke on Goethe's
Faust
during the 1840s but had ceased to do so by the end of the 1840s,
nor did he speak about it in the 50s, 60s and 70s. He only
started to lecture on Goethe's
Faust
again in the late 70s. In between he spoke only on mathematics,
mechanics and technology, that is he devoted himself to the sciences
which offered the best opportunity, especially at the time,
to foster one's acumen and critical faculties. It is most
interesting to see how he refers to this in his preface:
“Thirty or forty years ago, I used to lecture on Goethe's
Faust
at Leipzig University — the
book was published in 1881 — but I have only taken the
subject up again in recent years (1875). Why such a long
interval? Many factors were involved, outer and inner ones,
both subjective and objective. I grew older and finally old
and so did my students: semester by semester they grew more
and more morose. (People were getting more clever, but for
anyone who looked more deeply also more morose!) Open
interest of the spirit in the spirit was getting less and
less and we lived in an age when usefulness counted more than
beauty. For thirty years I yielded to necessity rather than
to my own inclination and put philosophy and poetry aside,
teaching the exact sciences of mathematics, physics and
mechanics instead.”

This was the
time of materialistic acumen. One sentence in the preface is
tremendously interesting, for it points directly to what
mattered at this time. Marbach states that in his conscious
mind he always thought he was doing exactly what he wanted to
do in the past, whether interpreting
Faust
or lecturing on technology. However, when he took up
Faust
again to interpret the work, he had to confess
he had been under an illusion, for he had merely obeyed the
spirit of the time. It would be good if many people could
realize the extent to which they are under illusions. For it
was the ideal of the spirits of darkness before 1879, and has
been even more so since they walk among us in the human
realms since 1879, to spin a web of illusion over human
beings and into human brains and let illusions stream through
human hearts.

Something else
is of interest when one considers such an individual who is
representative, as it were, of the influences which heaven
brought to bear on earth. He says — and this is in
accord with history — that in the 1840s he would mostly
speak about
Faust, Part 1
at the university, for there was no interest in Part 2. When he
started to lecture on
Faust
again — and we can now say this was
after Michael's victory over the dragon — his
exposition would mostly be on Part 2. The age of acumen and
critical faculties was indeed a time when access to Part 2 of
Goethe's Faust was difficult. Even today this work, which is
one of the greatest affirmations of Goetheanism, is
relatively little understood. Efforts at understanding are,
of course, liable to make us feel ill at ease, for nowhere
else is the atmosphere in which people live today treated
with such humour, such irony, as in Part 2 of Goethe's
Faust.
People live in a social atmosphere today
which has been gradually evolving since the sixteenth
century. They hail everything which has been achieved from
the sixteenth century onwards as great and glorious
achievements of our time and positively wallow in those
achievements. Goethe was not only a man of his time; he was
inwardly able to look ahead to the twentieth century and
wrote Part 2 of
Faust
for the twentieth, twenty-first and later centuries. This will be only
understood in the future. Hidden below the surface is a
humorous and ironical look at developments since the
sixteenth century, written in grand style. Consider the way
Goethe lets the much admired advances on which civilizations
live today be presented to Faust as a contrivance of Mephistopheles.
Thus not only the paper spectre of the golden florin,
[ Note 5 ]
but all the glorious
developments from the sixteenth century onwards were the
creation of Mephistopheles. In time to come, humanity will
see the magnificent irony with which the creations of that
time are treated in Part 2 of
Faust.
On the one
hand, we have Faust in his quest for the spirit, and on the
other, Mephistopheles, representative of the spirits of
darkness, who invents everything humanity has come to depend
on and will depend on more and more, especially in the
twentieth century.

Much which
will help us to be on our guard may be found hidden in Part 2 of
Faust.
It is a profoundly significant symptom
that someone who had used physics, mechanics, mathematics and
technology to learn the secrets of the age felt drawn to
speak about Part 2 exactly when the victory had been won over
the dragon. For decades before this he would speak only of
Part 1, which alone could be understood at the time.

We have seen,
especially also in the course of last year, that
anthroposophy is gradually helping us to bring life into
things which Goethe was only able to present in images, and
to discover their deeper meaning in Part 2 of
Faust.
[ Note 6 ]
Anthroposophy clearly cannot be derived from a study of
Faust,
but it is certainly true that anthroposophy throws a new and much
clearer light on the impressive images Goethe has given in
Part 2, and in his magnificent discourses in
Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years.

Here we touch
on a trend which will have to gain ground under the influence
of the progressive spirits of light as time goes on, to
counter the efforts of the spirits of darkness; and it will
gain ground if human beings are on their guard against the
spirits of darkness. These last three years have been a
challenge to be watchful and on our guard, though the numbers
of souls able to perceive the call are as yet far from
adequate. We have been able to see the opposite trend at work
here, there and everywhere. It is particularly when spiritual
life is beginning to be possible that the spirits of
hindrance are very much to the fore. We have seen
characteristic things and we shall see more of them. Even
just to hint at such things is liable to create continuous
misunderstanding. The spiritual atmosphere in which people
live today is impregnated with the will to misunderstand to
such an extent that one's words are immediately interpreted
as something different from what they actually mean to
convey. One has to use human words, and these have all kinds
of associations.

Today, so many
people base their judgement on national passions that if one
has in some way to characterize someone who belongs to a
particular nation, simply as a human individual who is here
on earth, this is taken amiss by people who also belong to
that nation, despite the fact that something said about
individuals who are involved in current events, for example,
has nothing to do with one's views of some nation or other.
The belief that the tempest now raging is caused by the
things that everybody is talking about today is especially
harmful because it is especially senseless. The causes are
much more deeply hidden and initially have really nothing to
do with national aspirations in some respects — please
note I am saying in some respects. National aspirations are
merely made use of by certain powers, but the majority of
people are so superficial that they do not want to know about
this. It will be some time before an objective view is taken
in this area.

Large sections
of humanity find it easiest to ascribe greatness and
far-sightedness to ideas which have arisen in a brain as
limited as that of someone just out of teacher training
college who is let loose not just on a class of school
children, but in this case on the whole of humanity. As I
said on a number of occasions, it did not need this terrible
time which has come upon us to form an objective opinion on
Woodrow Wilson from the point of view of spiritual science. I
spoke of this in the lectures I gave in Helsingfors in 1913;
you can read it up in
The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita.
[ Note 7 ]
There I spoke of the world schoolmastery of Woodrow Wilson and
the shallow superficiality of the man. In those days, however,
you were outside the Spirit of the time when you spoke about
Woodrow Wilson like this, for his grammar-schoolboy essays on
independence, culture and literature were then still being
translated into European languages. It will be a long time
yet before people will feel embarrassed at taking seriously
the grammar school level policies of Woodrow Wilson.

Spirits of
darkness are at work everywhere to befog human minds. One day
people will waken from the mists and vapours in which they
are now asleep and they will find it hard to understand how
people could have allowed themselves to be kept on
leading-reins by Woodrow Wilson and his wisdom in the early
twentieth century without feeling embarrassed. A moment of
waking will only come when people begin to feel embarrassed
at policies which are possible today.

It is
difficult to say truth-inspired things today because they
sound too much in opposition to the ideas which have been
inculcated into people's heads. And it is difficult to form
an independent judgement in the atmosphere which has been
produced not only during the last three years, but also
through everything I have called a social carcinoma in the
lectures I gave in Vienna.
[ Note 8 ]
It is necessary to take these things with profound seriousness
and not apply to them the concepts and ideas which people have
been in the habit of using as their criteria. It will be
necessary to realize that the present time demonstrates the
inadequacy and indeed the utter uselessness of the ideas
humanity has come to accept, and that in terms of world
history it is indecent for people to base their judgement on
the very ideas which have led to present events when those
events clearly show them to have been wrong. Do people think
they can cure the ills of the present time by applying the
same principles which have brought them about? If so, they
are utterly deceiving themselves.

Humanity has a
certain sum total of cultural achievements which come from
older times. These are now being used up. Every day brings
evidence of their being used up without anything new taking
their place. People are so little prepared today to
understand and see through such things in their full
seriousness. Many are still thinking exactly the as they did
in 1913, in the belief that the understanding they had in
1913 will also be adequate for 1917; they do not have enough
sense of reality to see that this kind of thinking has a
great deal to do with the events of the year 1917, having
brought them about, and that it cannot cure the ills we
experience now, in 1917.

The need of
the present time is that we go deeply into the events which
have occurred since the fall of the spirits of darkness; we
must gain as much insight as possible into the events of the
1880s, 1890s, and the first two decades of the twentieth
century. People are utterly confused in their judgement with
regard to them.

Neither do
they have a real idea of the radical difference in the way
people felt and reacted after 1879 compared to the way they
did before 1879. Going into something like Part 2 of Goethe's
Faust will also help us to progress; this work could not be
understood in Goethe's time because it is a critique of what
Goethe perceived to be the content of the twentieth century.
Characteristically, someone like Oswald Marbach only found
access to Part 2 after the fall of the spirits of
darkness.

These are the
insights and impulses which will help us to grow inwardly so
that we may meet the needs of our time. Many of the needs
sown before 1879 have not come to fruition, and in connection
with this there is a significant question which should really
cast its shadow on every human soul. Today I want to put it
merely as a question.

The events in
which we are caught up today indicate where humanity stands
now. What matters now is not merely to understand them, but
to find a way out of them. Yet while there is so little will
to penetrate the deeper, real impulses which have led to the
present age, practical minds will not be able to understand
these matters. It is wrong to think that no one has
sufficient insight into the current situation. People simply
do not want to listen to them, just as they do not want to
know about such a thing as Goetheanism, which is also like
the voice of the twentieth century. Yet this voice will only
be rightly understood if people seek to understand, seriously
and in all dignity, the profound significance of the fall of
the spirits of darkness in the autumn of 1879. To understand
the present time, it will be necessary to understand the
spiritual evolution of humanity. That is why I spoke of
Oswald Marbach, whose poem I gave you last year to let you
see how he looks at the past and ahead to the future. He
wrote the poem to mark the anniversary when Goethe found
entry into communities then called Masonic or the like,
though in the eighteenth century this meant something
different from what it means today. Goethe's viewpoint
allowed him insight into many of the mysterious impulses
which go through the world, things that people are too
superficial to want to see. Oswald Marbach wrote these verses
to mark the anniversary of Goethe finding his way to the
world of the spirit:

With you, my brother, father, sublime
master,
We now join hands across a hundred years
To mark the steadfast love which does unite
And closely bind all independent minds;
Greatest of spirits, mind most independent,
All our endeavour is to reach your heights;
We dedicate ourselves to you! We dedicate our sons,
So that one day achievement be the crown.
You strove as we now strive; yet the soul of your
endeavour
To gain self-knowledge that will lead to wisdom
Was always life itself with vigour lived,
Was power creative, actively progressing
To works which rise into the light,
In glorious beauty for eternity:
Like Israel you struggled against God
Until you won the victory o'er yourself!
The mystery which now for ever binds us
Will not be told to unenlightened souls;
Yet make it known to all the world
In deeds of purest love that never tire,
In the clear light which spirit gives to spirit,
In life eternal which shall never fade.
Lead on then, Master! Where you went before
We're drawn to follow in most ardent longing.